For years, many of the wildest and most memorable stories coming out of Florida bore the same byline: David Ovalle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Covering crime and criminal justice for The Miami Herald, David wrote about a murder rooted in Miami\u2019s niche world of pigeon racing<\/a>. A businessman who used $2.1 million in pandemic loans to buy \u201cthe peak Miami status symbols<\/a>,\u201d including a Lamborghini. The brazen theft<\/a> from a warehouse of thousands of pairs of the body-shaping undergarments known as fajas \u2013 think Spanx, but Spanish.<\/p>\n In his more recent job at The Washington Post, David spent three years covering addiction, illegal drugs and public health policy. Steve Smith, his editor for most of that time and now a deputy on Metro, says: \u201cDavid reports with intensity and empathy. He writes with precision and elan. He can spot a great story \u2014 and a charlatan \u2014 a mile away. And his talents as a writer and a reporter are eclipsed only by his decency and caring as a colleague.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re pleased he\u2019s joining the National desk as Florida correspondent.<\/p>\n Already, he has worked on \u200bseveral \u200bpieces of enterprise for National, including a revealing portrait with Pati Mazzei of a Bangladeshi immigrant whose brutal killing at a Florida gas station<\/a> turned into political messaging for President Trump.<\/p>\n At The Post, David investigated how pain pills<\/a> fueled the fentanyl crisis, how the Sackler family reaped a fortune overseas<\/a> and how police departments misused facial recognition technology<\/a>.\u200b He also reported \u200bfor The Post on immigration detention in Florida, the Trump travel ban\u2019s toll on Cuban American families and how exorbitant new visa fees \u200bwere roiling rural hospitals.\u200b\u00a0<\/p>\n Before that, David spent 20 years at \u200bThe Herald, where he was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the 2021 collapse<\/a> of \u200bthe condo building in Surfside that killed 98 people. He owned the crime and courts beat thanks to deep sources that he built in police departments and courthouses. He wrote about police shootings<\/a> and alleged misconduct<\/a>; the Parkland school massacre<\/a>, and complex legal cases involving the Stand Your Ground defense<\/a> and the death penalty<\/a>.<\/p>\n David has also covered no fewer than 18 hurricanes and tropical storms in Florida, Latin America and the Caribbean, including Hurricane Katrina<\/a> in New Orleans and Hurricane Maria<\/a> in Puerto Rico.\u00a0<\/p>\n David lives in Miami with his family.<\/p>\n Please join us in welcoming him.<\/p>\n \u2014 Nestor and Abby<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, many of the wildest and most memorable stories coming out of Florida bore the same byline:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-297576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}